Hot pads tutorial

I know there are only a few days left before Christmas, but there's still a little time left to whip up a few quick gifties.  So I figured why not go ahead and put up my very first tute?

I love to bake, but I hate oven mitts and find most other potholders bulky to use.  I've always wanted something that I could use to quickly grab a cookie sheet out of the oven or a hot plate out of the microwave.  I remembered seeing this blog post a while back about making little round pads that had pockets for your fingers.  I wanted something slightly different, so I thought I'd give it my own spin.  This is a great way to use up scraps and other odds and ends from your stash.  I actually had all the supplies necessary to make these already on hand - ah, the benefits of being a fabric hoarder.

This makes one pair.

Supplies:

• Enough fabric to cut four 4"x7" rectangles and four 4"x 2 1/2" rectangles; half a fat quarter would be more than sufficient
  

[They can be all the same fabric or all different, depending on your preference.
For the purposes of this tute, I'm going to assume you're using 2 different fabrics, one for the front, and one for the back of each pad.]

• Cotton batting - about 1/4 yard

• Insul-Bright - enough for two 4"x7" rectangles

• Binding/bias tape - about 1 yard of 1" single fold (or 1/2" double fold)

Like I mentioned above, this is a great way to use up odds and ends, so the amounts given for the supplies are approximate.  The pieces for the finger pocket are pretty small, so you can definitely get by with scraps.

In case you're unfamiliar with Insul-Bright, it is, as the name implies, insulated batting.  It's good for hot or cold, so you can use it for potholders, lunch bags, etc.  It is usually found with the interfacing and sold by the yard.  I had bought some over a year ago with the intention of making a lunch bag for E, but well, that never happened.  I'm happy to have a use for it now.

I made my own pattern from brown paper grocery bags, but you can just print out the handy dandy electronic version I made by clicking on the image to the right.

Instructions

1.  For each PAIR of hot pads, you'll want to cut:

2 BODY pieces from Fabric 1
2 BODY pieces from Fabric 2
2 BODY pieces from Insul-Bright
4 BODY pieces from Batting
2 POCKET pieces from Fabric 1
2 POCKET pieces from Fabric 2
2 POCKET pieces from Batting

Here are pics of the pieces for just one pad.  Yes, there is a fair amount of cutting involved, but if you're making a bunch, do it in front of the TV; it goes by more quickly that way. ;)

2. Next, take one of each of the POCKET pieces.  Place the fabric WRONG sides together.  Then take one piece of batting and place on bottom.

3. Stitch along the straight edge, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.

4. Turn the right sides out, and press.

5. Topstitch along the bottom, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.  Set aside.

6. Make a sandwich of BODY pieces in the following order:

Fabric - right side DOWN
Batting
Insul-Bright
Batting
Fabric - right side UP

7. Quilt together.  You can do this however you prefer - straight lines, criss-cross, swirls, circles, etc.  I did diagonal lines across, about 1" apart.  Because the sandwich is so thick, I didn't pin, but I tried to hold the pieces together as tightly as possible to minimize shifting.   You may want to trim the edges after quilting.

8. Baste the pocket piece along one end of the body. 

9. Apply binding. Because of the curves on these pads, I recommend stitching the binding on the "right" way, by opening it up sewing along the crease, then folding and stitching again.  There's a great video tutorial on how to do it on the Angry Chicken Blog, so I'm not going to go into detail on the step-by-step, but here are some pics of the process.






Here it what it looked like after I sewed all the way around with the binding unfolded:


And then after I flipped it over to the back:





I'll warn you, the bulk of the pad can make this part a bit tricky, especially if you've never worked with binding before.  I highly recommend using wide binding and going slowly around the curves.  This was easily the most time-consuming part for me, after cutting all the pieces.  It took me a few tries to get it looking nice and clean on both sides.

The key is, when you're folding the binding over and stitching the second time, you want it to be folded over just enough to catch the back edge, but you don't want it folded so far over that you end up with a flap, like this.


Needless to say, that one ended up ripped out and redone. *sigh* 

After folding it over, I pinned it like crazy, even though I generally hate pinning this way and it resulted in me getting jabbed more than a few times.

Side note: I'm obsessive about matching, not to mention stingy, so I made my own bias tape, which in the effort to save time, I merely creased in the middle.  Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment.  Basically, you cut fabric into strips on the bias (45 degree angle), then sew the strips together and press.  I'm not going to go into more detail than that because there are a ton of great tutorials on how to cut and press to make your own binding.  Obviously, the store-bought kind would work just fine too and take a lot less time.

Once that's done, voila!  You have hot pads!  I'm going to have to pull a bit of a bait & switch on you and show a different completed pair since I need to find matching fabric to cut and make binding for the pair shown in the first few pics.




This is definitely a project you could knock out in an evening.  I spent 3 evenings cutting and sewing almost a dozen pairs, assembly-line style.  But again, a lot of that time was spent making binding, so if you use store-bought, you could probably do it a lot faster.

Feel free to make as many of these as you like for friends and family, but please don't sell them.

I hope that this was helpful to someone out there.  I'd love to hear any feedback! This is my first tutorial though, so go easy on me. ;) 

Doll quilt

I had a bunch of extra squares leftover from my Christmas quilt project that I realized would be perfect for a doll quilt for one of E's Christmas gifts. She is very very into playing with her animals and baby dolls lately, and spends a lot of time making elaborate beds for them out of couch cushions, blankets from her own bed, and bits of fabric from my scrap bag. It's actually pretty hilarious to see her "sleepover" set up all over the living room floor.

The doll quilt also was the perfect opportunity for me to get some practice with free-motion quilting, which I'd never done before but have been wanting to try. I have to say, it was a bit difficult, but I really enjoyed it! I think I still have a long ways to go before I really get the hang of it, but I'm fairly sure I'm going to go ahead and use this technique on my big Christmas quilt.

Here's the finished doll quilt, front:



And back:


And an "action shot" where you can see the quilting in a bit more detail:


I cheated on the finishing and instead of making binding, I left a 1 1/4" border all around of the backing fabric, which I then folded over twice, pressed, and stitched down. WAY easier than dealing with binding. I'm actually pretty happy with it overall. Not bad for using up odds and ends I had laying around!

The only thing I have left to do now is wash it, which I'm actually sort of terrified to do. Normally, I prewash and dry all my fabric, but since I used the layer cake, that wasn't an option. The ladies at the quilt shop told me that it was better to keep it all the same, so wash everything or nothing. I'm really nervous about how badly the red fabric is going to bleed, especially since I have pure white squares in the mix. I think I'm going to do a trial run with one of those 'color catcher' sheets and see how it turns out. I keep telling myself, "it's only for a doll, it's only for a doll..." But if it does bleed, I guess that means that the full-size version will never be washed. *sigh* Keep your fingers crossed on that one.

Of course, now that I've made this little doll accessory, I feel compelled to make some little clothes for E's dolls and animals as well. She's actually been asking me to do this for a while, and I think I'm finally going to suck it up and make a few outfits for her stocking stuffers.

Way way behind

I've been sick on and off (but mostly on) for the better part of the last month. It's been really frustrating to not feel 100%, but even more than that, it's been driving me crazy how far behind I've fallen with my holiday crafting. I swear, my list just keeps getting longer and longer as I see more and more cute ideas for gifts and such.

The only project I've managed to finish recently is the tree skirt I started over a month ago for E's little Christmas tree. She's so excited about Christmas this year that we thought it'd be cool for her to have her own little (fake) tree in her room that she could decorate herself. I decided to make a little tree skirt for it, loosely based on this tute. Obviously I made hers a lot smaller, 26" diameter, and because of that, I also opted to only use 6 pieces instead of 8. I won't go into boring details, but if anyone's interested in how I did that, just post in the comments. ;)



I actually am extremely unhappy with how the tree skirt turned out, mainly because I screwed up the binding pretty badly. It's extra sloppy (and don't even get me started about how the backside looks), so sorry, no close-up shots.





So since I lamely have nothing else to show for the past few weeks of sickies, I thought I'd post about some WIPs and a few links to cool projects that I'd like to attempt to have done in time for Christmas. Some are decorations, some are toys, most are holiday-oriented.

I have a couple commissions I'm almost done with, one knit and one sewn, and I'm also trying to concurrently work on some handmade Christmas gifts for friends and family. I really want to post a tutorial for the gifties, but I also don't want to ruin the surprise...decisions, decisions.

I'm also still hopeful that I might be able to finish the Christmas quilt before Christmas. I have, however, given up on hand-quilting. Partly because I just didn't like the look of it, but mostly because I regained my sanity and realized that it would take me about 10 years to finish it by hand. Now I'm thinking I may give free-motion quilting a go.

This weekend's big project is baking! I'm hosting a cookie exchange next week and I have LOTS of baking to do. I still haven't entirely decided on what kind of cookies I'm going to make for the exchange, but being the overambitious nerd that I am, I also want to make decorated cookies for everyone. Going to be a busy busy weekend.

In a perfect world, I'd also have time to make some of this stuff:
Felt circle garland
Origami star
Paper evergreens
Salt-dough ornaments
Crochet snowflakes
Snowman decoration

Christmastime is here!

I love Christmas and all the hoopla that surrounds it. I'm especially excited this year because not only are we not traveling for a change, but my daughter is finally old enough that she really 'gets it' when it comes to holidays. It's really fun to see everything through her eyes for the first time again.

That being said, she has already started driving me nuts asking me, "Is it Christmas yet?" So I thought an advent calendar would help her count down the days. I remembered seeing this calendar in the Pottery Barn Kids catalog a while back. But even if I did want to shell out major $$ for it, it's no longer available. Of course, crazy person that I am, I figured I could make a reasonable facsimile.

I decided to take advantage of the Black Friday deals at Jo-Ann's last weekend and picked up a yard or two of felt in several different colors (I figured whatever I didn't use I could save for other kid-crafts).

I wanted to stick with a tree, like the PBK one, but seeing as how I waited to start this till November 29, I knew I couldn't do anything too complicated, so elaborate embroidery or applique were out. Instead, I decided to make a felt ornament pocket for each day.

Starting with a yard of green felt, I cut out two large tree shapes (one top piece, one bottom). Then I made a couple ornament stencils on cardboard and cut out 25 in various colors. The balls are just under 4 inches in diameter, and the bulbs are about 5 inches long and 3 inches wide. I wanted them to be big enough that I could stick a little gifty inside instead of candy, if I felt so inclined.

I also decided to embellish some of the ornaments with some of the fancy decorative stitches on my sewing machine. Even though a lot of the stitching ended up obscured by the numbers, I think it adds a nice touch. I did sort of wish I had more stitches to choose from, but oh well. This was the first (and probably last) time I used almost every one of them.

Oh, I almost forgot. The Santa face on the 25th day is from a small felt stocking I found at the dollar store. I just cut him out and stitched him to an ornament shape. Again, I had originally planned to make on myself from scratch, but when I found one already made, of course I opted for the short cut. ;)

I stitched each ornament to the top tree piece using contrasting thread, and leaving the top open to make a pocket. I used one of the blanket stitches on my machine, but a straight or zigzag would have worked just as well. I cut two rectangles of brown felt for the trunk and two stars out of yellow for the topper and then stitched each of these together. Again, I used the blanket stitch, but you don't have to. That's the nice thing about felt, you don't have to worry about finishing edges or turning and topstitching.

Next I put the top tree piece on top of the bottom piece, sandwiching the trunk in between at the bottom. Pinned and stitched all the way around and then I stitched the star to the top. Really, you could probably skip this step, but

Last, but not least, I let E help me put the numbers on each ornament. I originally thought I was going to have to either cut out numbers from felt on my own, but then I lucked out at found sticky felt cutouts at Jo-Ann. I had to buy two packages to have enough numbers, but I managed to use coupons for both so that I only ended up spending an extra $5.

Actually, when all is said and done, this really was not a very difficult or expensive project at all. You could even hand-stitch this if you don't own a machine. Definitely could be made in a weekend - it took me the better part of 3 evenings to complete it. One to cut everything out, one to embellish the ornaments and figure out what order I wanted them all to be in, and then one to sew everything together. Even with the "splurge" on pre-cut numbers, this whole project cost me less than $10. Take that, Pottery Barn!

Edited 12/11/09 to add:
Here are a couple close-ups, as well a shot of E standing in front of it, so you can get a better sense of scale.

Slowdown

Sorry as usual for the lack of posts, but life has gotten in the way of crafting. I recently found out that our beloved dog has renal failure, so I've been too busy worrying and tending to her to be very productive. Here's a pic of my sweet girl in her prime, back when we lived in Chicago.

I have, however, still managed to finish a few items in the last couple weeks, mostly commissions for friends.

Black and white pompom hat for a toddler. I don't usually make hats with the squared-off top like that, but I think I may start. With the pompoms, it's super cute!

And this one is one of my new favorites - owl hat!

My friend's son is obsessed with owls and she asked if I could make an owl hat for him with some extra soft yarn since he's been having issues with hats being scratchy. I was really excited to find some yummy wool/cashmere yarn (Debbie Bliss Como) at my LYS in what I think are perfectly owl-y colors. I came up with the pattern on my own, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. His eyes and beak are 100% wool felt, and stitched on by hand.

E was also very excited about the owl hat, so I of course now I'm making her one too. But being the cheapskate I am, hers is made from Lion Brand's Wool-ease Thick & Chunky, which I got on sale not too long ago.

Currently, I'm working on another commission (a football themed hat in yummy wool/bamboo yarn), and I'm also making slow but sure progress on the Christmas quilt. I'm determined to have that thing done by Christmas, come hell or high water! However, in a bout of insanity, I decided I wanted to hand-quilt it. Let's just say it's not going so well right now. There may be a total about-face in the near future.

Here's some pics of the finished quilt-top and the back.

Biggest project yet (WIP)

And I mean that quite literally. I think I mentioned at the beginning of the summer that I had bought a "layer cake" of Christmas fabrics (moda's ultra-yummy Figgy Pudding line) with the intention of making a big quilt. Well, only about 4 months later, I finally got started. It's odd. I never in a million years thought that I would take up quilting, but after making one for E's toddler bed, I've totally been bitten by the bug. Something about the excuse to buy so many different yummy fabrics is irresistible to my fabric-hoarding self.

As usual, I got a bit overambitious with this one. I decided that instead of doing straight squares like last time, I'd try to get a bit more fancy and do a pattern. After googling around and reading up on the basics and such that I'd skipped last time around, I settled on what's called a "disappearing nine-patch" pattern. I was drawn to it partly because it looks way more complicated than it is, but also because it can be done in so many variations, each with its own distinctive look (one of my favorite was this one, which used almost all black and white fabrics, with a splash of red in the center of each 9-patch).

Basically, what I ended up doing was cutting each of my 10" layer cake squares into four 5" squares. Then I sewed those into 9-square patches. Here's all the 9-patches, laid out together.

After all the work involved in sewing & squaring off these patches, I was sorely tempted to just leave it like this. But I decided to push on and, holding my breath, cut each 9-patch into quarters, like so:

This felt like it took FOREVER, especially squaring everything off, but I finally ended up with 64 squares. Then I spent a while arranging them on the floor until they were "random." After all that, sewing them together was a snap, although as usual, there was a lot of ironing involved.

Here's the quilt top so far. I'm pretty happy with it.

I had held off on ordering any yardage for the backing, binding etc. because there are so many colorways and I wanted to see exactly how the pattern was going to look before settling on coordinating fabrics. The big disadvantage to waiting was that a lot of this line is now sold out. I did manage to find a few different fabrics that I'm going to piece together for the border, backing and binding, so I'm hoping it'll all work out.

I'm on a bit of a knitting kick of late, so it may be a while before I get back to this quilt, but I WILL have it done by Christmas!!

A few FOs...

For once in my life, the lack of posts here has not meant I've been slacking! Just so busy working on so many various things that I haven't had time to finish enough to post.

Here's the lone Halloween-related item I made this year:

Sadly, it's not the costume, but the striped goody bag.

I opted not to make E's costume this year. She is notoriously moody when it comes to wearing the things I make her, and I knew that if I spent a lot of time sewing her a costume only to have her refuse to wear it, I would be crushed/furious. So instead, I bought her this simple, but cute bee costume from Old Navy. It was basically a fleece vest with wings and antenna on the hood, so not only would it be easy to get on and off, it would also be highly adaptable to any variations in weather.

True to form, as soon as I showed her the costume and asked her to try it on, she refused. This continued until literally minutes before the party we attended. I actually whipped this bag up the morning of the party after being hit by a wave of guilt that I hadn't made her costume. It's about as simple as it gets: yellow felt stripes appliqued onto black felt, then folded and sewn down two sides to make a bag. I did flatten the bottom into a gusset of sorts, but that's about as fancy as it got. I thought it made a pretty cute accompaniment to her costume, and it was WAY cheaper than the $12 Pottery Barn Kids version (although I'll concede that the PBK one is a lot cuter). If I'd had a little more time and energy, I probably would have found a way to add some wings, but oh well.

My other major accomplishment this week was finishing the Stella Pixie baby hat that a friend had commissioned for her newborn baby. I absolutely adore the Cascade Heritage yarn that I used to make it, and I'm more than a little excited that I have enough leftover to make something for E too.

A couple minor warnings for anyone else making this: first of all, even knitted to gauge, it's big. Since this was for a newborn, I made this a full size smaller than the pattern originally called for and cast-on 8 sts less than the smallest size they had listed. I read this same complaint on a few other blogs, but of course, not until after I'd already started mine.

The other complaint is that the pattern I linked to on Etsy's Storque blog has an error in it (the buttonhole section towards the end), so I would recommend downloading the PDF link they have instead, which comes from the publisher. I struggled for a while with the buttonhole part, which it made no sense, before finally giving up and doing a different kind.

Here's a pic of it on one of E's dolls. It's missing the bottom strap portion, but you get a better idea of the pixie shape when it's on a head.

Last, and sort of least, there's this random stripey hat that I've been working on here and there for the last few weeks. I started it mostly to use up a few odds and ends that I had laying around, but I also wanted to try out an idea I'd seen where you knit the earflaps first and then incorporate them into the hat round. I hate picking up stitches almost as much as I hate seaming, and this was a nice compromise. This was also a nice chance for me to practice my "jogless jog" striping.

My original intention was to make a hat for E. Well, of course, it ended up HUGE so now I think it's going to be a hat for me, haha.